Peter Merriman
Biographic Data
| ID | 92755 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Peter Merriman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Peter |
| FAMILY NAME | Merriman |
| SIGNATURE | MERRIMAN P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Aberystwyth University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8118-6684 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 56 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1197 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 53 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 20 |
Topology, again: From crumpled handkerchiefs to stretched Möbius strips
In response to the article by Unnithan Kumar et al., I ask whether there is an audience for a more mathematically focussed utilisation of topology amongst post-structural thinkers writing on space and spatiality in human geography. While the authors suggest that concepts from topology can be useful for approaching spatial relations in less precise and more multiple ways, human geographers are much more likely to engage with conceptual tools from …
Nations as refrains: Wales and the Festival of Britain 1951
Over the past two decades, cultural geographers have been paying increasing attention to the performative, habitual, affective and atmospheric qualities of nations, nationalist movements and national identities. In this paper I utilise the concept of the refrain ( ritournelle ) from the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Fèlix Guattari to trace the very different rhythmic refrains and movements which may or may not gain a certain consistency in the w…
Mobilities, design and passenger experiences
Places as refrains: A non‐constructive alternative to assemblage thinking
Over the past 20 to 30 years, relational, post‐humanist, processual, and non‐representational approaches to space and place have gained an increasing purchase within anglophone human geography, whether underpinned by academic engagements with Western philosophy, anthropology, or indigenous thinking and praxis. One approach by anglophone geographers has been to incorporate assemblage thinking into constructivist and representational accounts of th…
Crystallising places: Towards geographies of ontogenesis and individuation
Building upon the current concern with relational, processual and assemblage approaches to place, this paper argues for a move away from 'pointillist' and constructivist accounts of the assembling of places because they reinforce binaries, reintroduce structures and highlight singular representational moments in the building, identification and dismantling of places. Drawing upon Deleuze's philosophy of difference and Simondon's writings on indiv…
Space
Micro-Mobilities in Lockdown
In this paper I reflect upon my own micro-mobilities and embodied mobile practices living and working under COVID-19 government restrictions in Wales in mid-2020. I use the opportunity to reflect upon the past ten years of Transfers and to think about future research in the field of mobility studies, arguing that an attention to seemingly ordinary embodied movements and mobilities provides one avenue by which mobility scholars could move beyond t…
The spaces and politics of affective nationalism
Over the last decade, affect has emerged as one of the most prominent concepts within human geography. More recently, scholars engaging with the nation have also drawn on insights from studies of affect to interrogate the ways in which relations between people and materially heterogeneous assemblages underpin national forms of identification, organisation and expression. This symposium aims to interrogate affective nationalism both as an analytic…
National movements
Nonplaces
The concept of nonplaces is most often associated with the work of the French anthropologist of supermodernity Marc Augé, although there are parallels with earlier writings on placelessness by Edward Relph and the nonplace urban realm by Melvin Webber. Nonplaces are characterized as modern spaces of mobility, consumption, and exchange with which people rarely identify, develop few attachments, or undertake face‐to‐face interactions, with archetyp…
Mobility and the Humanities
Mobility and the humanities
Relational governance, distributed agency and the unfolding of movements, habits and environments: Parking practices and regulations in England
This paper argues that practices and technologies of relational governance are central to the everyday and mundane ways in which local and national governments try to reshape the behaviour, habits, actions and movements of ordinary citizens. While behaviour change theories may acknowledge the role of material technologies and environments in enabling positive behaviour change, they fail to acknowledge how actions, habits, practices and movements …
Molar and molecular mobilities: The politics of perceptible and imperceptible movements
In this paper, I examine the processes through which movements emerge and are rendered perceptible or imperceptible, building upon the writings of geographers, mobility scholars and philosophers who have sought to overcome or efface the binary of mobility/stasis without flattening differences or overlooking questions of 'the political'. The paper does this by distinguishing between 'molar' and 'molecular' movements, drawing upon Gilles Deleuze an…
Bookish cultural geographies
In this short editorial, we outline some of the reasons why we think books and book reviews remain important for the field of cultural geography
‘Landscape and Englishness’ . . . and me
Military mobilities in an age of global war, 1870–1945
Interventions on military mobilities
Mobility and the humanities
This special issue showcases new and emerging work on mobilities by scholars working in arts and humanities disciplines. In this introductory article we counter the conventional genealogy of mobility studies and the new mobilities paradigm as having emerged from the social sciences, tracing the long entanglement of mobility thinking with debates in the arts and humanities, from writings rooted in process philosophy and post-colonial thinking, to …
Geographies of Mobilities: Practices, Spaces, Subjects
Gijs Mom, Atlantic Automobilism: Emergence and Persistence of the Car 1895–1940
Nations, materialities and affects
In this paper we demonstrate how writings on affect, materiality and relationality necessitate a rethinking of theories of the nation, focusing on the intermittent emergence and flickering presence of nation-ness and national identity. In moving beyond Billig’s notion of ‘banal nationalism’, we argue that the presencing/absencing, foregrounding/backgrounding, and individualizing/collectivizing of feelings results from the differential capacities …
National bodies and affects: A reply to Antonsich and Skey
Mobilities III: Arrivals
In this final report on mobilities, I discuss research published between late 2014 and early 2016, focusing upon three key themes. I examine how recent work on medical bodies and race advances long-standing concerns with the mobile body. I then trace emerging philosophical and political writings on the themes of speed and 'accelerationism', before examining the contributions of mobility historians and transport historians to academic work on mobi…
Mobility Infrastructures: Modern Visions, Affective Environments and the Problem of Car Parking
This paper builds upon recent research on mobility infrastructures to question the usefulness of the mobility/moorings binary and suggest that scholars should examine the practices of infrastructuring by which mobile subjects, affects and environments emerge. The paper outlines recent work on the affective qualities of mobility infrastructures before examining some of the diverse discourses, feelings and atmospheres which have gathered around the…
Rethinking Mobile Methods
Over the past, few years a broad range of scholars have been emphasising the vital importance of methodological innovation and diversification to mobilities research. Whilst welcoming this pluralisation of research methods, this paper encourages a note of caution amongst researchers who wholly embrace the call for mobile methods, which are frequently justified by an assumption that 'conventional' or 'traditional' methods have failed. I outline so…
Driving Places: Marc Augé, Non-Places, and the Geographies of England’s M1 Motorway
In this article I provide a critical account of the 'placing' of England's M1 motorway. I start by critiquing Marc Augé's anthropological writings on 'non-places' which have provided a common point of reference for academics discussing spaces of travel, consumption and exchange in the contemporary world. I argue that Augé's ethnology of supermodernity results in a rather partial account of these sites, that he overstates the novelty of contempora…
Practising architectures
Hot, banal and everyday nationalism: Bilingual road signs in Wales
Nations, materialities and affects
In this paper we demonstrate how writings on affect, materiality and relationality necessitate a rethinking of theories of the nation, focusing on the intermittent emergence and flickering presence of nation-ness and national identity. In moving beyond Billig’s notion of ‘banal nationalism’, we argue that the presencing/absencing, foregrounding/backgrounding, and individualizing/collectivizing of feelings results from the differential capacities …
Human geography without time‐space 1
In this paper I challenge the obsession of many Anglophone human geographers with time‐space and space‐time. While acknowledging that spacing and timing are important dimensions of the unfolding of many events, I question the logic of positioning them as the primordial, foundational, a priori measures for thinking about events, position, extension and context, and I suggest that their prioritisation reflects the continuing power of space and time…
Landscape, mobility, practice
This paper is an edited transcript of a panel discussion on 'Landscape, Mobility and Practice' which was held at the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Annual Conference in September 2006. In the paper the panel engage with the work of geographers and others who have been drawing upon theories of practice to explore issues of mobility and how we encounter, apprehend, inhabit and move through landscapes. The con…
Guest Editorial
What are surfaces?" So much of life occurs at the surface that, as students of the human scene, we are obliged to pay far more attention to its character (subtlety, variety, and density) than we have done.The scholar's neglect and suspicion of surface phenomena is a consequence of a dichotomy in western thought between surface and depth, sensory appreciation and intellectual understanding, with bias against the first of the two terms
Profiling the passenger: Mobilities, Identities, Embodiments
What makes the figure of the passenger distinctive as both a subject and an object of mobility and transportation systems? What distinguishes the passenger from other mobile subjectivities, from nomad, flaneur to consumer? How is the passenger represented, practiced and performed? How has the passenger and their experiences been conceived, imagined, manipulated, regulated and engineered? And what kind of human-technology assemblages do passengers…
Molar and molecular mobilities: The politics of perceptible and imperceptible movements
In this paper, I examine the processes through which movements emerge and are rendered perceptible or imperceptible, building upon the writings of geographers, mobility scholars and philosophers who have sought to overcome or efface the binary of mobility/stasis without flattening differences or overlooking questions of 'the political'. The paper does this by distinguishing between 'molar' and 'molecular' movements, drawing upon Gilles Deleuze an…
Automobility and the Geographies of the Car
The motor car or automobile has had a profound impact on global mobility, settlement patterns, the global economy, and the environment. Transport policy-makers and environmentalists highlight the unsustainable nature of contemporary petrol-car usage, yet despite widespread calls to rethink contemporary automobility and move towards more sustainable forms of public and private travel, it is only in recent years that social scientists have started …
Geographies of Mobilities: Practices, Spaces, Subjects
Mobilities I: Departures
This first report identifies key trends in mobilities research during late 2012 and 2013. Using the 150th anniversary of the London Underground as its launching point, the article explores a number of academic engagements with its history, as well as identifying the lack of research on underground or underwater mobilities. It then examines recent work which might be considered to provide creative or experimental engagements with and meditations o…
A new look at the English landscape: Landscape architecture, movement and the aesthetics of motorways in early postwar Britain
In the past decade or so geographers have been arguing for more performative, practice-oriented and non-representational accounts of the ways in which people encounter, move through and inhabit landscapes, spaces and places. In this paper I argue that these theoretical concerns should also prompt geographers to explore the fairly long history of critical commentaries and aesthetic interventions by writers, artists, film-makers and landscape pract…
Space and spatiality in theory
This article is an edited transcript of a panel discussion on 'Space and Spatiality in Theory' which was held at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Washington, DC, April 2010. In the article, the panel map out some of the challenges for thinking, writing and performing spaces in the 21st century, reflecting upon the emergence of new ways of theorizing space and spatiality, the relationship between writing, action and s…
Mobility and the humanities
This special issue showcases new and emerging work on mobilities by scholars working in arts and humanities disciplines. In this introductory article we counter the conventional genealogy of mobility studies and the new mobilities paradigm as having emerged from the social sciences, tracing the long entanglement of mobility thinking with debates in the arts and humanities, from writings rooted in process philosophy and post-colonial thinking, to …
Materiality, Subjectification, and Government: The Geographies of Britain's Motorway Code
In this paper I provide a critical discussion of Foucault's work on government and governmentality. I argue that geographers have tended to overlook the ways in which practices of self-government and subjectification are performed in relation to programmes of government, and suggest that they should examine the technical devices which are embedded in networks of government. Drawing upon these observations I suggest how geographers might proceed, …
Mobilities II: Cruising
In this second report I discuss research published in 2014 and early 2015. I examine recent debates about elemental geographies, including research on the mobilities associated with air and water, and on how aluminium, steel and carbon facilitate movement. The report then highlights the vibrant materialities and mobilities underpinning events, examining different approaches to processual and molecular mobilities, including work which is critical …
Mobility Infrastructures: Modern Visions, Affective Environments and the Problem of Car Parking
This paper builds upon recent research on mobility infrastructures to question the usefulness of the mobility/moorings binary and suggest that scholars should examine the practices of infrastructuring by which mobile subjects, affects and environments emerge. The paper outlines recent work on the affective qualities of mobility infrastructures before examining some of the diverse discourses, feelings and atmospheres which have gathered around the…
Architecture/dance: Choreographing and inhabiting spaces with Anna and Lawrence Halprin
In this paper I build upon geographical writings on non-representational theory and dance by exploring how the pioneering avant-garde dancer Anna Halprin and landscape architect Lawrence Halprin attempted to choreograph a range of bodies and environments in 1950s and 1960s California. In contrast to geographic writings which have focussed on the regulatory and oppressive politics which are frequently embroiled in the choreographing of specific tr…
Operation motorway: Landscapes of construction on England's M1 motorway
Interventions on military mobilities
Network Nation
Academics have increasingly begun to question the significance of bounded understandings of space and place, preferring instead to approach places as open, dynamic, relational entities that are in-formation, and the ways in which different places are connected by flows of people, ideas, and material things. The aim of this paper is to focus on the implications of networked and relational ways of thinking for how we understand the notion of 'terri…
Travel projects: Landscape, Art, Movement
With its origins in PhD research (Intimate Distance 2006-10) and through a series of dialogues with Professor Peter Merriman, Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of Aberystwyth, Webster addresses the practice of painting at the intersection of cultural geography, spatial theory and fine art. ‘Travel Projects’ is a critical reflection on a number of perennial conceptual issues for both geographers and visual artists in which the…
Respect the life of the countryside: The Country Code, government and the conduct of visitors to the countryside in post‐war England and Wales
Geographers examining the spaces of government and governance, and in particular those drawing upon the writings of Michel Foucault on government and governmentality, have tended to overlook the importance of different media, technical devices and practices of self‐government to specific rationalities and programmes of government. In this paper I argue that the materialities and immaterialities of many mundane media technologies, the way they art…
Cultural geographies in practice, The art of hitch-hiking: Daniel Gosling’s performance10.1.00 >> 1+1 ? ( @ ? ) : ? + & + … >> 30.1
Cultural Geographies in Practice: The art of hitch-hiking: Daniel Gosling’s performance 10.1.00 >> 1+1? (@?):? + & +… >> 30.1.00
Driving Places: Marc Augé, Non-Places, and the Geographies of England’s M1 Motorway
In this article I provide a critical account of the 'placing' of England's M1 motorway. I start by critiquing Marc Augé's anthropological writings on 'non-places' which have provided a common point of reference for academics discussing spaces of travel, consumption and exchange in the contemporary world. I argue that Augé's ethnology of supermodernity results in a rather partial account of these sites, that he overstates the novelty of contempora…
Respect the life of the countryside: The Country Code, government and the conduct of visitors to the countryside in post‐war England and Wales
Geographers examining the spaces of government and governance, and in particular those drawing upon the writings of Michel Foucault on government and governmentality, have tended to overlook the importance of different media, technical devices and practices of self‐government to specific rationalities and programmes of government. In this paper I argue that the materialities and immaterialities of many mundane media technologies, the way they art…
Operation motorway: Landscapes of construction on England's M1 motorway
Materiality, Subjectification, and Government: The Geographies of Britain's Motorway Code
In this paper I provide a critical discussion of Foucault's work on government and governmentality. I argue that geographers have tended to overlook the ways in which practices of self-government and subjectification are performed in relation to programmes of government, and suggest that they should examine the technical devices which are embedded in networks of government. Drawing upon these observations I suggest how geographers might proceed, …
Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre: Assembling and Governing the Motorway Driver in Late 1950s Britain
Merriman, P. (2006). 'Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre': assembling and governing the motorway driver in late 1950s Britain. Sociological Review, 54, 75-92. Special Issue: Sociological Review Monograph Series: Against Automobility, edited by Steffen Bohm, Campbell Jones, Chris Land and Matthew Paterson
A new look at the English landscape: Landscape architecture, movement and the aesthetics of motorways in early postwar Britain
In the past decade or so geographers have been arguing for more performative, practice-oriented and non-representational accounts of the ways in which people encounter, move through and inhabit landscapes, spaces and places. In this paper I argue that these theoretical concerns should also prompt geographers to explore the fairly long history of critical commentaries and aesthetic interventions by writers, artists, film-makers and landscape pract…
Driving Spaces: A Cultural‐Historical Geography of England's M1 Motorway
Landscape, mobility, practice
This paper is an edited transcript of a panel discussion on 'Landscape, Mobility and Practice' which was held at the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Annual Conference in September 2006. In the paper the panel engage with the work of geographers and others who have been drawing upon theories of practice to explore issues of mobility and how we encounter, apprehend, inhabit and move through landscapes. The con…
Symbols of Justice’: The Welsh Language Society's campaign for bilingual road signs in Wales, 1967–1980
Hot, banal and everyday nationalism: Bilingual road signs in Wales
Automobility and the Geographies of the Car
The motor car or automobile has had a profound impact on global mobility, settlement patterns, the global economy, and the environment. Transport policy-makers and environmentalists highlight the unsustainable nature of contemporary petrol-car usage, yet despite widespread calls to rethink contemporary automobility and move towards more sustainable forms of public and private travel, it is only in recent years that social scientists have started …
Travel projects: Landscape, Art, Movement
With its origins in PhD research (Intimate Distance 2006-10) and through a series of dialogues with Professor Peter Merriman, Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of Aberystwyth, Webster addresses the practice of painting at the intersection of cultural geography, spatial theory and fine art. ‘Travel Projects’ is a critical reflection on a number of perennial conceptual issues for both geographers and visual artists in which the…
Creating an archive of geographical engagement
Architecture/dance: Choreographing and inhabiting spaces with Anna and Lawrence Halprin
In this paper I build upon geographical writings on non-representational theory and dance by exploring how the pioneering avant-garde dancer Anna Halprin and landscape architect Lawrence Halprin attempted to choreograph a range of bodies and environments in 1950s and 1960s California. In contrast to geographic writings which have focussed on the regulatory and oppressive politics which are frequently embroiled in the choreographing of specific tr…
Human geography without time‐space 1
In this paper I challenge the obsession of many Anglophone human geographers with time‐space and space‐time. While acknowledging that spacing and timing are important dimensions of the unfolding of many events, I question the logic of positioning them as the primordial, foundational, a priori measures for thinking about events, position, extension and context, and I suggest that their prioritisation reflects the continuing power of space and time…
Practising architectures
Mobility, Space and Culture
Over the past ten to fifteen years there has emerged an increasing concern with mobility in the social sciences and humanities. In Mobility, Space and Culture, Peter Merriman provides an important and timely contribution to the mobilities turn in the social sciences, encouraging academics to rethink the relationship between movement, embodied practices, space and place. The book takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing upon theoretical and em…
Mobility, space, and culture
Space and spatiality in theory
This article is an edited transcript of a panel discussion on 'Space and Spatiality in Theory' which was held at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Washington, DC, April 2010. In the article, the panel map out some of the challenges for thinking, writing and performing spaces in the 21st century, reflecting upon the emergence of new ways of theorizing space and spatiality, the relationship between writing, action and s…
Network Nation
Academics have increasingly begun to question the significance of bounded understandings of space and place, preferring instead to approach places as open, dynamic, relational entities that are in-formation, and the ways in which different places are connected by flows of people, ideas, and material things. The aim of this paper is to focus on the implications of networked and relational ways of thinking for how we understand the notion of 'terri…
Profiling the passenger: Mobilities, Identities, Embodiments
What makes the figure of the passenger distinctive as both a subject and an object of mobility and transportation systems? What distinguishes the passenger from other mobile subjectivities, from nomad, flaneur to consumer? How is the passenger represented, practiced and performed? How has the passenger and their experiences been conceived, imagined, manipulated, regulated and engineered? And what kind of human-technology assemblages do passengers…
Routledge Handbook of Mobilities
Guest Editorial
What are surfaces?" So much of life occurs at the surface that, as students of the human scene, we are obliged to pay far more attention to its character (subtlety, variety, and density) than we have done.The scholar's neglect and suspicion of surface phenomena is a consequence of a dichotomy in western thought between surface and depth, sensory appreciation and intellectual understanding, with bias against the first of the two terms
Sociology (39 works) · Geographies of human-animal interactions (32 works) · Political science (20 works) · Aesthetics (18 works) · Art (17 works) · Law (14 works) · Law (14 works) · Politics (14 works) · Social science (14 works) · Computer Science (13 works)